Currents Magazine Fall 2022

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Istarted shooting 35 mm film on disposable cameras the summer after I graduated high school. It felt like a more special way to keep my memories — and reminded me of the huge box of old photos at my grandparents’ house that I love to rifle through every time I visit.

That same summer, I started to dream about being the editor of this magazine. I entered the Pepperdine Graphic Media newsroom on a tour, a prospective student with wide eyes and even bigger dreams. When I saw the magazines laying on the table, I immediately collected the past four editions and took them home to pour over them. I stored them in a box under my bed — for safekeeping.

Since starting at Pepperdine, I have fallen head over

heels in love with magazines.

I love the freedom and creativity that comes with building a magazine from scratch — and watching the incredible talent pour forth from the designers, the writers and the editors, who have come to be my dear friends.

We shot almost every photo in this magazine on 35 mm film — some of them on a camera that once belonged to my grandfather, and some on a camera that our Photo Editor Lucian Himes’ mom passed down to him.

And so, this magazine is a beautiful, messy amalgamation of all of my favorite things; fashion, 35 mm film and exploring what makes humans so silly and fragile and emotional.

Within these pages, you can read about students who choose to stand out, the way friends love one another, how an indie film with an all-Asian cast left an impression on students, the way one student is healing her relationship with her body and how social media is convincing Gen Z that reading books is cool.

I hope that you enjoy the rule-breaking that I believe makes this magazine so much fun — like the feature stories that incorporate the author’s own experiences with the voices from their reporting.

I hope this magazine pushes you to think kinder thoughts about the special and unique humans around you; the people who are living their lives with just as much detail and nuance as you are living yours.

I hope that, through these stories, you can feel like you get to know the writers who dedicated so much of their time to collecting and sharing them.

I hope that these stories make you feel a little bit more compassionate toward the stranger sitting next to you.

I hope you ask your loved ones what their love languages are and feel compelled to find your own as well.

I hope you are a bit kinder to yourself when you look into the mirror.

Enjoy! This ‘zine was made with so much love, including love for you, dear reader.

Marley Penagos, Editor-In-Chief

One shot only

Words: Marley Penagos

Pictures: Lucian Himes

Listen to: “Kodachrome” by Paul Simon

Pop the back of the camera open, load the film, advance the film, point, focus … focus … focus … and shoot.

When I finish the roll, then the waiting begins. The photos will be ready in five to seven business days — maybe less if the developer is cool. In those five to seven days, there’s a lot of time to wonder if I accidentally exposed the film, or if my focus was sharp enough to capture the moment. There’s also room to completely forget exactly what I shot, and there is a happy surprise when the photos come back.

Or — the significantly more tragic side of the coin — something happened, and no photos come back at all.

“All my pictures are of other people, which I absolutely love,” said sophomore Ella Coates, a former Graphic staff photographer. “And so it’s really so sad whenever a roll doesn’t come back or like, it breaks because I don’t get to see all my friends and all these happy moments that I captured.”

Yet, somehow, even through all of the out-of-focus results, the rolls lost to sunlight, and the photos so dark I genuinely have no idea where I was pointing the camera in the first place, I am simply in love with shooting 35 mm film. And I am not alone.

Shooting film is on the rise among young people especially. According to an October 2022 segment from NBC News — which was shot on 8 mm

cinema film for the first time since the ‘80s — “film is a chance to slow down,” and shooting it is “magical” and “never stops being exciting.”

“Oh my goodness, waiting for my rolls to come back, it’s like Christmas Eve,” Coates said. “It’s so exciting because a lot of the time, like I have these two rolls right here, I don’t know what’s on them. It takes a while [for me] to shoot one roll, so it really is like Christmas because I don’t know what to expect.”

The appeal of film

Coates and I are on the same page. I started shooting film in 2019 with disposable cameras, then, later that year,

upgraded to my first Single-Lens Reflex Camera — a Konica Autoreflex A that I scored for $10. Despite the hundreds of dollars I have spent on film and development since then and the countless failures I’ve had, I am emotionally attached to my film photos in a way I can’t describe.

But the appeal of shooting film may actually have a more scientific explanation, said Greg Montano, a fellow 35 mm film enthusiast and owner of Dexter’s Camera in Ventura, California.

The grain in 35 mm film is circular, Montano said, while pixels in a digital photo are squares. Like atoms, planets and water droplets, most natural elements occur in spheres or circles.

“What naturally occurs as a rectan-

Dexter’s Camera on Ektar 100

Courtesy of Charis Cheung on Fujifilm 400

Courtesy of Ella Coates on Fujifilm 400

gle? Like, salt crystals?” Montano said, laughing. “There is just a smoothness to the grain [in film], and that’s why people, inherently, even if they are not trained and they don’t know, will still gravitate toward a film picture regardless.”

For sophomore Charis Cheung, there is just something special about the way a film camera can capture a moment.

“The essence of film describes how I want to portray a photo better than any digital camera could do,” she said.

Cheung said a huge part of film photography’s appeal is the delayed gratification that comes with being unable to see a photo as soon as she takes it, and Montano echoed that sentiment.

“I like that I take a picture, and that’s it,” Montano said. “If I shoot [on] my phone, I’m gonna want to like, edit it, upload it, comment on it. And it’s crazy because I have never treated my film like that.”

Coates said she thinks the inability to immediately judge the photos is one of the unique perks of shooting on film.

“You can’t look back at the pictures and retake them to make yourself look better, make your friends look better in these different ways,” Coates said. “And so you have to really be present in the moment with what you’re shooting.”

Worth the investment

Dexter’s Camera prides itself on being the “$5 developer” and will develop, scan and print photos for a total of $15.

They receive between 100 and 200

rolls of film per day, Dexter’s employee Geoff Browne said.

There has been a gradual increase since California’s first quarantine in 2020. Montano and Browne both agreed that many people who are now film connoisseurs first picked up a film camera when they were bored at home.

“I feel like, ever since COVID, I’ve seen a lot more people shooting film because it was almost this new project,” Browne said. “People had a lot of free time and a lot of downtime to tackle something new.”

Cheung started shooting on disposable cameras in 2019, and, in 2021, her dad gifted her first point-and-shoot film camera: a Ricoh FF-10S. She said she believes the look and feel of film is something worth paying for.

“The colors that film creates can never fully be replicated through editing,” Cheung said. “So I think investing in film is so worth it. It’s a hassle but also something new to our generation and different.”

For Coates, film is like an escape.

She said she started shooting film in 2020, at the start of her senior year of high school. As a working photographer who shoots weddings and portraits digitally, film brought something exciting to the table for Coates.

“My outlet is film because that’s something that I wouldn’t necessarily use for a photo shoot,” she said. “It’s just a fun way to do something I love without it being stressful.”

For those just starting out with film, Cheung, Browne and Montano all suggested people start with a single-use

disposable camera and work their way up to a more manual camera, which is harder to use but reloadable.

“Film is a bigger investment, so starting off with a short-term camera will get you more comfortable with how film kind of works,” Cheung said. “Film is not for everyone, so using a disposable camera is a good way to test it out, and, if you do end up liking it, I would say to get a point-and-shoot.”

Once a photographer is more comfortable with film and all of the manual features that come with an older camera, film photography becomes like an art — a collaborative effort between the photographer and the developer.

As a novice film photographer, I often shot my rolls on the wrong camera settings. Luckily, I learned that developers can make gentle tweaks during the development process to save photos that may not have turned out otherwise — creating a very special end product.

Film is so special, in fact, that more movies have started shooting on film, such as Steven Spielberg’s “Westside Story” and Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name.”

“Recently, I have seen a lot of commercial stuff moving toward film again, and it seems like people are really starting to like that look,” Browne said. “They could easily have a digital camera that can shoot as many photos as they want, but, again, it’s that look that they are going for, which is cool to see coming back.”

Matthew Harvill on Lomography Color Negative 100.

BOOK TOK

Whimsical fantasies. Seductive thrillers. Heartwarming romances. Suspenseful mysteries.

BookTok is, “a corner of TikTok devoted to reading, which has clocked up 9.6bn views and counting,” according to The Guardian.

It provides a plethora of popular book recommendations for story lovers across the globe.

BookTok is just other book readers getting together and figuring out what books are good and which ones not to read, junior Elija Gatling said.

For Pepperdine students, BookTok serves as a constant source of both comfort and entertainment. It helps them discover new stories and allows them to escape from the chaos of their semesters by simply turning one page at a time.

“It’s hard to find people who are open to talk about their favorite books and analyze the stories in a quick and concise manner, but you can find all of that on TikTok,” senior Matthew Harvill said.

With this explosion of social media content comes a rising rate of reading across generations. In 2021, publishing sales increased by 50%, and the most popular BookTok authors managed to generate 20 million sold print copies of their works, according to the New York Times.

Harvill’s favorite BookTok recommendation was “The Secret History,” by Donna Tartt. The novel revolves around a group of university students studying classics who all experience a traumatic event and must process the aftermath together.

“I was pulled in by the dark academia elements,” Harvill said. “The characters are all really messed up but also relatable, and you can’t expect how it ends. I would give ‘The Secret History’ five out of five stars.”

Junior Julie Ahn said it wasn’t until this past summer that she somehow wound up on BookTok and got hooked on reading. Since the semester started and course

Words: Ryan Bresingham | Pictures: Lucian Himes Listen to: “Wildest Dreams” by Taylor Swift

work has picked up, she said she wishes she had more time to read.

“BookTook means a lot to me because I re-found my passion for reading,” Ahn said. “Now that I have these books that I am genuinely interested in, I am reading all the time again.”

Ahn’s first introduction to BookTok was when a TikTok video discussing Colleen Hoover’s trending best-seller, “It Ends With Us,” showed up on her “For You Page.” One of her favorite books from the app thus far has been “Book Lovers,” by Emily Henry, due to her love for romance stories.

Both Ahn and senior Erin Dean shared that “Verity,” Hoover’s popular psychological thriller novel, immediately grabbed their attention.

“It was so fast-paced and engaging,” Dean said. “It grabs you in the first cou-

ple of pages and makes you wonder what’s going to happen next.”

Junior Hayden Araza said book recommendations started popping up on her TikTok feed, leading to her adding them to her GoodReads “Want to Read” shelf.

She said she ended up stumbling upon a BookTok section located in a Barnes & Noble store while hanging out with a friend. The bookstore’s website even has an entire page dedicated to the most popular BookTok books. Araza said she and her friend have since created a book club together to trade off series between them.

Araza said she enjoyed Michelle Zauner’s debut memoir, “Crying in H Mart.” She said Zauner uses heart-wrenching prose to recount her emotionally distant relationship with

her mother, who she lost to cancer.

“I would never think that I would relate to something like that, because I don’t have a mom in that position,” she said. “But [Zauner] reaches out and touches your heart so well.”

If one is interested in exploring a fantasy fiction series to invest in, Araza highly recommended “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Maas. She said she appreciated how it felt like an extremely well-rounded story.

Gatling’s favorite BookTok book is also fantasy fiction, and he said it explores every possible theme: romance, race relations, drama and magic.

“The best [BookTok book] that I saw was ‘The House on the Cerulean Sea,’” Gatling said. “It is so good, it is literally my favorite book I have ever read. I give it a five out of five.”

The book, written by TJ Klune, follows a case worker who works for an orphanage that houses magical kids. It showcases the protagonist’s parental love for the children and his romantic relationship with the orphanage’s headmaster.

Harvill said this online community of book lovers has rejuvenated reading in a new way. The coolest thing about this, he

said, is that, by reading, anyone can imagine a world that is so unlike their own.

“I have a really strong desire to travel the world,” Araza said. “For the longest time as a kid and even now, books have allowed me to do that even though I’m sitting in my bed at three in the morning.”

BookTok creates a safe space for creativity and imagination, Harvill said, and it rekindles past book

lovers’ passions for literature and introduces new readers to the beautiful power of storytelling.

“These days, it’s inevitable how much screen time we have,” Dean said. “We watch a lot of Netflix, we’re always looking at our phones. If I can find a form of entertainment that is not a screen, I think that’s really great.”

Which BookTok book shouldyouread?

r e s u r f a c e s w i m

Senior Clare Cornelius took a global economics class as a part of her Sustainability minor, which she said was “life-changing” and made her want to start a centralized business where all the materials came from one place.

She started knitting at a young age and said she learned to sew after she came up with the idea of making swimsuits her brand.

Cornelius discovered a fabric called Econyl, also known as “eco-friendly nylon,” which she said she wanted to use because it was ethically sourced. It is made from nylon recycled from discarded fishing nets and industrial carpet waste.

“You don’t have to dress boring to be sustainable,” Cornelius said. “You can wear fun, cute clothes that fit you well and contribute to a better environment for everyone.”

Cornelius said all of her swimwear is made-to-order.

“Nothing is ever made until the order is placed, and then I order [materials] and make it, so I have no stock ever,” Cornelius said.

Resurface Swimwear products require about seven days to make and three to four days to ship, so it can take around 10 days to receive a handmade, eco-friendly bathing suit.

The prices range from $49 for bottoms to $59 for tops and about $100 for one-pieces in all different styles.

Words: Victoria La Ferla Pictures: Courtesy of Claire Cornelius Listen to: “Malibu” by Miley Cyrus

One fan, then another, then another — this has been the trajectory for Byrdhouse.

Byrdhouse formed in 2020 and now has four members. Junior Garrett Podgorski is the guitarist, senior Thomas Lowe plays the drums, alumnus Ben Blaufarb (‘22) plays the bass and junior Josh Nash is the lead singer and keyboard player.

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“We’re very new,” Podgorski said. “We literally just started, but things are kind of unraveling already for us — which is really cool.”

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Throughout 2020, Nash and

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Podgorski became friends and started throwing around the idea of starting a band after both were pursuing music as a hobby. Soon after, they put those words into action.

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“It was two of us writing songs, performing, posting on Instagram — stuff like that,” Nash said. “And eventually we were like, ‘Alright, we actually want to continue the band and form a bigger group.’”

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They recruited Lowe as the drummer, and they most recently found Blaufarb while looking for a bass player.

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“Thomas actually found Ben at the

skate park,” Podgorski said.

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Lowe said he was giving Blaufarb a ride, and Blaufarb saw drumsticks in the back of the car. This sparked conversation about music, and Blaufarb eventually revealed he played bass. Lowe then asked Blaufarb if he wanted to be a part of Byrdhouse, as he seemed to be a perfect fit to complete the band.

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“I auditioned, and then I guess they liked me,” Blaufarb said.

The band released their first single, “King of Love,” in February 2022 and released their second single, “Left and Gone,” in April 2022.

Words: Abby Wilt | Pictures: Lucian Himes

Listen to: “Left and Gone” by Byrdhouse

Byrdhouse on Lomography Color Negative 100

They said their music quickly spread around Pepperdine’s campus, mainly by word of mouth and social media.

Podgorski said he was the one to come up with the name Byrdhouse after tossing around several other ideas, such as “The Grapes” and “Suitcase on an Island.” He said he originally thought the name was just going to be “The Birds,” but then thought of Byrdhouse — and it stuck.

“I just thought of it and was like, ‘That’s actually unique,’” Podgorski said. “I feel like it’s kind of like a young thing.”

After practicing and building chemistry with each other, the four had their debut performance at Lowe’s house.

“It was our first show,” Lowe said. “We thought maybe 10 people or 15 people would come — and we had probably 50 or so. It filled my house.”

While they said they love writing, practicing and recording their music, their favorite part is performing live and interacting with their audience.

During a performance, Podgorski said he gets excited just thinking about how far they have come.

“I’m just looking at Josh and I’ll be like, ‘This is the song I wrote,’” Podgorski said. “‘This is so cool.’”

One of their main goals of each show is to make sure the crowd is having fun and connecting with each other over a shared love for music.

“If the audience isn’t enjoying it, then you’re not enjoying it,” Nash said.

They said they love seeing the whole crowd listen, dance and sing along, but if their music makes a lasting impact on just one person, it is all worth it.

“Seeing other people enjoying our stuff is just really moving,” Nash said.

While the four band members each have unique talents within the band, they said they work together to complement each member’s individual skills while playing. They all said their favorite time to do this is during solos — when one person takes the spotlight and the other three get to supplement

what they are playing through their instruments.

“When you do a solo, it’s almost like a piece of the band is missing,” Blaufarb said. “So you have to fill that piece in.”

The four said anyone who is considering starting their own band or making their own music should take a leap of faith.

“Byrdhouse has not always been perfect rainbows,” Podgorski said. “We’ve had to go through a lot of learning curves and ups and downs to get where we are.”

Byrdhouse continues to grow and promote their music in the LA area, with hopes of sharing music that tells stories and connects with people throughout the world.

“I don’t want to be cocky or anything, but I think that we’re all really talented,” Podgorski said. “I think that we definitely have a spot somewhere in the industry.”

Live, Laugh, Love Languages

Best friends Alex Cordova and Izzy Lincoln on Cinestill 50D

It’s more meaningful to me when someone I love says something encouraging to me; when I’m able to just be around someone I love; when I hug someone I love; when someone I love helps me with a task; when someone I love surprises me with a gift.”

These are some of the ways people love and feel loved, according to Gary Chapman, creator of the 5 Love Languages.

In his career as a couples counselor, Chapman noticed couples often expressed they felt unloved by one another, according to Verywell Mind. With research and further analysis, Chapman concluded this was because they weren’t loving each other in ways they individually felt loved. He found people give and receive love differently — through words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, acts of service or gifts.

Dori Lansbach, interim director of Relationship IQ, said love languages are important for people to incorporate in their relationships, especially during college.

“College [is] a time when having strong social connections is really important to people,” Lansbach said. “Especially in this day and age with social media being so huge and people feeling really lonely and struggling with anxiety and depression, having firm connections is really important for people.”

Love languages on a college campus

Relationship IQ is a program on Pepperdine’s campus that helps students foster healthy relationships. Lansbach said love languages are a common topic students raise.

“People are always really interested in learning about ways that they communicate and act with their partners and relationships,” Lansbach said. “They want to know how their partners want to receive love and how they themselves are kind of apt to giving love to other people.”

There are many love language quiz-

zes people can take to find out what their preference is, such as the official one Chapman created. Lansbach said Relationship IQ offers students love language tests at events like Waves Expo, and she encourages students to learn about their love languages to strengthen their relationships.

“There’s such a great power in being able to identify your own love language,” Lansbach said. “I think it kind of helps you walk in some confidence and some strength and what you need from people. And then knowing, as well, what you’re gifted at giving to others.”

First-year Emma Monte said she dislikes love language tests because they often give really specific scenarios that the person taking the test might not relate to. Instead, she said noticing how the actions of others make her feel has helped her determine her love languages more accurately.

“It’s clear that some ways of loving people are more encouraging than others,” Monte said. “When you find out what the [love language for that] person is and you are intentional about loving them that way, then your relationship can either hopefully get mended or grow exponentially.”

Growing up in a Hispanic household, Monte said physical touch was how her family expressed love the most. She said acts of service is her least favorite because people’s intentions aren’t always clear when they perform certain acts.

Words of affirmation is also at the bottom of her list. Monte said this is difficult because a lot of her friends’ top love languages include words of affirmation.

Monte said she often thinks kind things about the people in her life but rarely verbalizes them and wants to be more intentional about giving words of affirmation.

Monte said it’s important to recognize the differences in love languages in relationships and work to make others feel loved, even if it is not instinctive.

LANGUAGE.”

- DORI LANSBACH

“If you really do love them, then you’ll be willing to put their desires before your own, even if it’s uncomfortable or annoying or it costs you more,” Monte said.

In his research, Chapman noticed conflict in relationships stemmed from a lack of communication of one’s needs, which led to feelings of being unloved and not cared for, according to Simply Psychology. He found most couples were unaware of differences in love languages.

Lansbach said people can easily navigate these differences by communicating how they feel loved and being open to learning about how others feel loved.

“I don’t think there are that many pitfalls with having differences as long as you understand what those differences are,” Lansbach said.

Words: Yamillah Hurtado | Pictures: Lucian Himes | Listen to: “Guys” by The 1975

“THERE’S SUCH A GREAT POWER IN BEING ABLE TO IDENTIFY YOUR OWN LOVE

Love languages in romantic relationships

Navigating differences in love languages was a challenge for first-year Shea Dauphinée and her then boyfriend Clavey Wood, she said.

The couple met through their high school competitive jazz choir and dated for about three and a half years.

“He’s like, before anything, my best friend,” Dauphinée said. “And so it’s really nice to just kind of have that constant support.”

With Wood attending a community college in the Central Valley, they were a long-distance couple. Dauphinée said this made communication and awareness of love languages all the more important.

Dauphinée’s top love language is acts of service, while her last is physical touch. Woods’ are the exact opposite, with physical touch first and acts of service last. Dauphinée said Wood was intentional about giving her acts of service through cooking food for her or supporting her family. Dauphinée said she appreciated this and tried to be more mindful of showing him love in the ways he needed it most.

“That’s been the hardest part — communicat[ing] about what we need from each other and stuff like that,” Dauphinée said. “At times it’s easier, at times it’s not.”

Dauphinée said they tried to see each other every three weeks. One of the last times they saw each other, she gifted Wood a custom-made guitar he had been wanting for as long as they have been together.

“Even though gift giving isn’t really one of his top ones, I definitely felt in that moment that was something he obviously cherished,” Dauphinée said. “That was a nice reminder that even if

you know it’s not your top love language, you should still act on it.”

When Wood received the guitar, Dauphinée said, he just kept smiling, and he still plays the guitar all the time.

Love languages in friendships

The pair said they never discussed love languages with one another until recently, but even so, they are aware of how the other feels most loved.

In their time together, they provide comfort through hugging, listening to, encouraging and reassuring one another.

“I can always go to her and get a hug or just talk,” Lincoln said. “And not even talking, just being there together and knowing that I’m loved and safe and cared for.”

Lincoln said they became friends their first semester of sophomore year through mutual friends. They both attended an on-campus event and instantly bonded.

“It’s weird because, for me, it’s hard to be friends with somebody that quickly,” Cordova said. “It was just so natural.”

Studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina for the 2022 summer program is what brought them closer, they said. This was the first time the pair lived together — an experience they said helped their friendship grow.

“[With] what we were going through there and [with] our anxiety coming back here, dealing with new experiences, we were there for each other,” Cordova said. “We understood [one another] because we had the same worries. We were like, ‘We’re in this together.’”

Love languages are as important in platonic relationships as they are in romantic ones.

For best friends, juniors Izzy Lincoln and Alex Cordova, love languages subconsciously play a role in their friendship.

They identically ranked their love languages as physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service and gift giving.

Seniors CJ Davenport and Carter Lentz also deepened their friendship while studying abroad in Buenos Aires in Summer 2022.

The pair, who met their first year at Pepperdine, became friends during their junior year when they stumbled into the same friend group, Davenport said. However, it was in Buenos Aires when they truly grew close.

“We were absolutely already friends

Photo courtesy of Shea Dauphinée and then boyfriend Clavey Wood

by that point,” Lentz said. “That experience, then, was kind of a time of growth for the two of us, both individually and collectively, as a unit, if you will.”

They both said they turned to one another for support when they were going through difficult times.

Davenport’s love languages differ based on whether he is receiving or giving them, he said. Nonetheless, his top love languages for both are quality time, words of affirmation and acts of service.

He said gift-giving is his last because he is a people-pleaser. Davenport said he struggles to pick out a good gift.

“I want people to perceive me well, and whether it’s through acts of service or giving gifts, I want them to be very well pleased with what I have to offer,” Davenport said.

Lentz’s top love languages are words of affirmation, quality time and acts of service. He said knowing the power of words of affirmation makes him more inclined to give them.

“Words of affirmation is my first, because I think knowing that I love receiving them, and knowing when people say words of affirmation to me, and knowing they mean it and I can trust the authenticity of what they’re saying, I just know how much that means,” Lentz said.

Both Davenport and Lentz said they value quality time in their friendship. Lentz said he knows Davenport feels loved through quality time, so he tries to give him this, especially when he needs it.

Davenport said he cherishes quality time because he values community.

“For me, community and relationships are just very important parts of my life,” Davenport said. “And they always have been — I love being social. I love having friends. I love introducing my friends to my other friends.”

Through having quality time, Davenport said the pair have been able to dig deeper into their relationship, support one another and learn about each other. He said there is never a dull moment when they are together.

Lentz agreed, and he said even when they sit in silence or are half asleep, he

still considers it quality time.

“Quality time comes easy because we spend so much time together,” Lentz said. “Any time with him is quality in my book.”

Unofficial love languages

Early this year, some online commentators touted a sixth love language: feeling known. This means a person feels loved when someone in their life shows they remember things about them and what brings them joy.

Although there has been debate about whether or not an official sixth love language exists, students agreed that the ways they love and feel loved are not bound by Chapman’s main five.

Everyone agreed that humor is a love language. Lincoln said when she first met Cordova, she thought she was the funniest person she had ever met, and that made her want to be friends with her.

Lincoln said Cordova has the same sense of humor as her and loves when she randomly sends her funny videos.

“I feel like incorporating humor into things for me, and just knowing to keep it light whenever I am going through

stuff,” Lincoln said. “Knowing that’s a good time for humor is [one of my love langauges].”

Davenport said the idea of someone thinking about him when they watch a video or see something funny makes him feel loved.

“Carter looks for ways to think about people and understand people,” Davenport said. “If he sees a video that reminds him of that person, he will always send it to him. I love that.”

Davenport said receiving phone and FaceTime calls is a love language for him. He said it’s much more personal to him than a text.

Monte said one of her love languages is sharing a meal with someone, whether it is trying new food together or cooking together. She said she appreciates when people want to share their cultural cuisine with her because it makes her feel closer to them.

Whatever love language they use, students said being intentional with their love is important for having healthy relationships.

CJ Davenport and Carter Lentz on Cinestill 50D

If Jewelry C ULD Talk

For all of junior Carly-Shae Condon’s life, her dad signed every lunchbox note and birthday card with a drawing of a little palm tree.

So, when he gifted her a Tiffany & Co. necklace with a personalized pendant of his palm tree drawing for Christmas, it was a lot more than a piece of jewelry to her.

“It wasn’t that it was just very personal, it was a very grown-up present to receive, or at least it felt like that to me,” Condon said. “I was 14, and I’m like, ‘Tiffany, I’ve never owned something that had a name or that felt expensive or important.’ It felt like one of the first

steps of being a young woman.”

For many students, jewelry isn’t just an accessory — it is something that holds meaning and memories. It sparks conversations, builds relationships, shows one’s personality and serves as a form of identity.

Condon went to a private middle and high school with uniforms and a strict dress code.

“We all looked the same,” Condon said. “I mean, I wore the same skirt, same shirt, same shoes, same jacket as every single girl in my whole school. The only thing that we could do that looked different was jewelry.”

While jewelry can create a sense of identity and distinction in group settings, it can also have intimate importance for the individual.

Senior Briana Labe said she used to work at the jewelry store Gorjana in Malibu, and she and her manager shared everything about their lives with one another. One day, Labe said, her manager recommended she purchase a Gorjana ring made from mother of pearl with a symbol of a butterfly in it. She said this symbolizes protection and represents a transitional time in life.

“To me, it represents transforming into the next thing and that nothing’s

Austin Yerke’s watch

All photos on digital

Hunter Hesslen

Elizabeth Brummer’s rings

Words: Anezka Liskova | Pictures: Lucian Himes | Listen to: “JEWELZ” by Anderson .Paak

forever and things are always changing and moving,” Labe said. “It’s kind of a nice little reminder for me if I ever feel stuck or I’m in the same spot for a while. I just look down at it and remind myself that it’s not forever.”

When Labe isn’t wearing her ring and other jewelry, she said it changes her day.

“Sometimes I will forget to put it back on, and I actively think about it throughout the day,” Labe said. “It feels like jewelry is just kind of a part of me at this point.”

Several students said they get so used to wearing jewelry that they feel

strange when they don’t wear an item.

“The idea of leaving the house without my rings on, like, I would feel as if I’m leaving my house without a shirt on,” Condon said.

Junior Gabe Smedes said he feels a similar way with his necklaces, which are some of his favorite pieces to wear.

“If I’m not wearing my necklace, or one of my necklaces, or an earring, I’ll be like, ‘Wait, I forgot something,’ like my phone or my keys,” Smedes said.

Sophomore Austin Yerke started wearing watches because he always saw his dad wear them growing up.

“I wear my watch every day, so I feel

like if I don’t have it on me, then I feel different that day,” Yerke said.

A lot of the time, jewelry has a story or memory behind it.

Senior Elizabeth Brummer studied abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from January to May 2022. In March, Brummer said she and her friends stumbled upon an outdoor market in the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires, and they decided to shop around with only the pesos they had left in their pockets.

Brummer said she found a sterling silver ring with a little aquamarine stone and fell in love with it. The ring was exactly what she wanted. The man

Austin Yerke’s hand

selling it was very kind, and they had a memorable conversation.

They talked about his business and how he got into making jewelry. He shared his stories, and Brummer told him about how she was traveling. She said it was a cool way to connect with a local Argentinian.

After buying the ring, Brummer said she realized she didn’t have enough pesos to get food, but she said it was worth it because of how beautiful the ring was and for the great experience of finding a piece like it.

“Each piece is so representative of me,” Brummer said. “It just builds a

framework of yourself that you’re expressing outwardly to other people.”

Condon has multiple jewelry pieces that come from her mom and grandmother, she said. Some of her grandmother’s rings don’t fit her, so she puts them on a necklace instead.

“Even if I can’t wear it properly, there’s just a level of comfort and pride honestly, like having it on my body in any kind of way,” Condon said.

The stories behind her jewelry spark conversations and build relationships with others, Brummer said.

“It’s just always been a storyteller,” Brummer said. “It’s always a conver-

sation starter. I’ve moved around a lot and met a lot of new people at new high schools and college, and I feel like it’s always something to talk about.”

Condon said jewelry is something very special to a person, which is why it makes a great gift for others.

“No matter what the piece is, jewelry is an elegant gift,” Condon said. “I think that if you are giving or receiving jewelry, it’s such a delicate, niche thing. You really have to know someone to get something that they’re gonna wear on their body.”

Austin Yerke

Hunter Hesslen

Elizabeth Brummer’s hands

All tatts go to heaven

Chloe Brown, worship leader and K-12 teacher, is building a sleeve on her right arm, combining her love of tattoos and biblical themes.

Each individual piece represents a religious story or moral that she holds dear to her heart, including hope after the flood in the Old Testament.

“I have a swallow holding an olive branch, and I was sort of nodding to the dove coming back with the olive branch after the storm,” Brown said. “It was supposed to kind of represent the calm after the storm or there will be peace

even when the waters are really rocky.”

Tattoos are on the rise within Christian circles and in the greater American culture. From 2012 to 2019, the United States saw a 21% increase in the number of adults with at least one tattoo, according to an Ipsos poll. Many Christians are deciding they can have ink and be faithful despite Old Testament prohibitions against tattoos.

Brown got her first tattoo when she was 23. Her brother originally drew the design of an elephant to commemorate the life of her grandmother, who died

when she was 16. She now has eight tattoos in total.

For Brown, tattoos can mean anything from a sentimental remembrance of a loved one to something that made her smile in the moment and will continue to make her happy as she goes through life, Brown said.

“My parents always say, ‘You’re gonna regret that in 15 years,’ and I’ll be like, ‘No, that’s who I was 15 years ago,’” Brown said.

For her more meaningful statement tattoos, Brown said she looks for things

Words: Audrey Geib | Pictures: Lucian Himes

Listen to: “Pennies From Heaven” by Louis Prima

Chloe Brown on Fujifilm 200

she wants to constantly be reminded of. Brown’s right arm displays significant stories from her faith, including Jesus turning water into wine and expressions of the Trinity: God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

When Brown is not leading worship at Malibu Pacific Church or her home church, Iglesia Ni Cristo, she is an acting teacher at Village Christian School in Los Angeles. Brown said she has never felt that her peers judge her or treat her differently because of her tattoos, even with the school having a religious foundation.

“I’ve never felt any grief from teachers or even the principals,” Brown said. “I think they know who I am, and they know who they hired, and they know who they’re working with.”

Brown said parents who are either unfamiliar with her or are more conservative in their views can show apprehension before they get to know her and her values.

“I work with K-12 students, so especially those parents [with younger kids], they’re like, ‘Who is this acting teacher, who is this young girl, she’s covered in tattoos,’” Brown said. “But then they see the work that I’m doing, and they see how much I care about these kids.”

Brown acknowledged that tattoos and religion have had a long history of separation, but she said she has personally noticed a movement toward acceptance of tattoos within Christianity.

“I think that the Bible-based, nondenominational churches — and I would say even what I see in the Presbyterian churches — are maybe becoming more relaxed on [tattoos in church],” Brown said. “I do think that, overall, there is a movement that’s becoming more relaxed and accepting of that.”

Verses in the Old Testament include laws that can be seen as directly opposing tattoos — like Leviticus 19:28, which calls on believers to not make marks on their skin.

Brown has spent a lot of time thinking about what the Bible says about tattoos. She believes the statements in the Old Testament reflect society at that time but do not reflect society today.

“I do think that there were a lot of laws that were just true at the time,” Brown said. “I mean, now we have women in churches as pastors and elders and leaders and I think there was a time in the Bible where that was not biblically sound. I think that where our society is now, that is one of the things that I sort of justified in my head. I was like, ‘That makes sense of the time, but now we live in 2022.’”

Brown grew up attending Christian schools and church services. Even as she went through the two-year acting conservatory at Pacific Conservatory Theater and began following her passion for music and acting, she said Christian values stayed with her.

Brown said she has encountered people at church who were more comfortable with tattoos and some who even had their own.

“Being raised in a church in Los Angeles with a lot of artists and a lot of musicians and actors, they all had tattoos,” Brown said.

Susan Barge, Malibu Pacific Church attendee, said that, in the 45 years she has been an active member of a church community, she has seen a spike in tattoos.

“I do feel like we see more as time goes on and mostly on young people,” Barge said.

In contrast to Barge, Brown said she thinks the reason behind this is location, not age.

“I think because it’s LA, it’s way more common,” Brown said. “I think I’d probably be more surprised to see somebody without tattoos. Especially amongst musicians and artists in LA. It’s such a very common part of the world and the scene of just expressing yourself.”

nce upon a time, four Gen Z Asian kids watched a film that resembled them and their families in a badass way.

A24’s “Everything Everywhere All At Once” is not an easy film to describe.

But for these four Pepperdine students, the film meant something-close-to-everything to see an Asian immigrant family’s story portrayed on the big screen with such nuance and grandeur.

“Everything” explores the cultural divide between immigrant parents and their second-generation children, as well as the tensions between traditional, straight-identifying parents and their queer kids. The film transports audiences to multiple universes, reminding them just how “small” and “stupid” humans are yet how lovable and extraordinary human connection is — if one chooses to experience it.

Students discussed the connection each of them felt with the characters and themes in this whirlwind of a movie, the power of representation in the film, the relationships and characters they related to and the existential crises they experienced.

“I feel like I came out of the film loving people and humanity as a whole a little bit more,” said senior HeeJoo Roh, who is also a Graphic staff artist.

Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as the Daniels, take viewers to numerous alternate universes filled with martial arts action, science fiction, romance and intergenerational family drama in this movie. Within this multiverse, the film centers on laundromat owner Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), who has a strained relationship with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) and her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), all while facing a looming IRS audit — along with “a great evil.”

“To have a movie like this — where people of every background, every culture, can come together and just breathe and just go into this world and have a

good time but also learn and grow and love and experience — I think this is the perfect time for a movie like this, and we all needed it,” Communication Professor Jasmine “Jaz” Gray said.

The power of Asian and intersectional representation

With no prior expectations, senior Sabrina Kuo watched “Everything” in her living room with her mom in August.

“I cried,” Kuo said. “I laughed. All the emotions.”

Kuo, who is of Taiwanese and Chinese descent, said she was first curious about the film when people on TikTok commented on her posts saying she bears resemblance to the character Joy.

Kuo said she found it refreshing to see a film that was really different from other movies she’s seen and that also has a full-Asian cast.

“I feel like I haven’t seen a movie with that much [Asian] representation since like, ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ and, like, ‘Shang-Chi,’” Kuo said.

Junior Tony Lin, a Chinese American with first-generation immigrant parents, said he watched the movie in theaters in May.

“The way they talked and interacted with each other, the things they said, it was so real, like, these could have been conversations and interactions that people in my family could have had,” Lin said.

Senior KJ Ross said the opening scene of the film also reminds her of her family, especially with the way the characters speak using a mix of Cantonese and Mandarin.

The opening scene shows Evelyn attempting to organize piles of paperwork and receipts on her desk, which both Lin and Ross said they grew up seeing their moms do.

For Lin, the movie accurately represents the dynamics of a multigenerational Asian American family.

“It’s a little weird getting exposed like

Words: Emily Shaw | Pictures: Lucian Himes Listen to: “This is a Life” by Son Lux, Mitski and David Byrne

that,” Lin said. “It’d be like, you’re watching this in theaters, you’re just like, ‘Oh my God, someone went into some random Asian lady’s house and just filmed this,’ you know? Like, it’s so real.”

Ross said she felt proud that a film with a mostly Asian cast became popular and rated well among viewers. She appreciated seeing Yeoh star in the film since Ross grew up watching Yeoh’s other films with her mom.

Roh said they loved “Everything” so much the first time they watched it with their friends that they watched it again in theaters with their parents. Roh identifies as a queer person and is of Korean descent.

One scene in the film shows Evelyn introducing her daughter Joy’s girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel) to Joy’s Gong Gong, or grandfather, (James Hong). At first, Evelyn refers to Becky as Joy’s “good friend,” but near the end of the film, Evelyn identifies her as Joy’s girlfriend.

This moment brought tears to Roh’s eyes, they said. Roh had come out to their mom a little over a year before they saw this exact scene in theaters with their parents.

Roh said their mom did not reject them when they came out, but she also was not completely accepting either.

“That character arc that Evelyn came through was kind of like a wish fulfillment coming true for me,” Roh said. “It made me think, ‘Oh, I wonder if my mom had that little arc as well in her mind when I came out.’”

Daniel Kwan, one of the directors of the film, learned that many of his queer friends who grew up with immigrant parents came out to their families multiple times, according to an article in USA Today.

— it’s like this slow-motion erasure of who they are.”

Roh said they appreciate seeing queer Asian representation in “Everything,” as they rarely see this intersectional identity in movies.

“We see that natural use of language in homes, and we see tons of Asian faces, Asian actors and Asian stories, and I just haven’t seen anything like that before in film,” Roh said. “And add a queer, little gay touch, like, that’s good.”

Gray said films have historically represented Asian Americans as a model minority, hypersexualized Asian women, emasculated Asian men and have perpetuated other stereotypes that do not recognize their full humanity.

“It’s important to see a film like this,” Gray said. “Because I think, on so many levels, whether it is the casting, whether it’s the storyline, whether it is the capacity to help us see in these characters ourselves, there are so many aspects of the film that fight back against dominant narratives that have been stifling.”

“Each time, it’s almost brushed over or ignored, or the parents are waiting for the ‘phase’ to end,” Kwan told USA Today. “There’s no big screaming match. They just end up having to come out every couple years, every time they introduce their partner. They have to basically fight for the chance to be seen

Roh said they believe the film’s characterization of Waymond Wang, Evelyn’s husband, might seem like a stereotypical, emasculated representation of an Asian man in mainstream media, but the movie turns the stereotype on its head and shows Waymond’s kindness is actually a strength.

In the beginning of the film, Waymond appears passive since Evelyn seems to always tell him what to do, but

Sabrina Kuo dressed as Jobu Tupaki on Cinestill 800

Roh said Waymond’s character is actually quite active. Roh sees this through Waymond taking the initiative to bring Evelyn the divorce papers so they can talk about and work on their marriage.

Lin said Waymond is a character who is not afraid to fight for those he cares about while also having a capacity for silliness and positivity.

“It’s a movie that humanizes all sides,” Roh said. “And that’s what I love about it.”

A first-generation immigrant parent-child relationship

The Daniels wanted the film to tackle the idea of questioning one’s choices and wondering about other paths one could have taken through using the multiverse, according to an Atlantic article.

Roh said they think the multiverse works particularly well with immigrant characters because of how life-changing the decision to move to another country is.

Ross herself has moved around a couple times — from Southern California to Portland to Seattle — and her mom also moved from Hong Kong to Michigan to Southern California. Ross said she related with Evelyn when she imagined the different possible lives she could have had if she remained in different places.

“At the same time, it’s like, there’s no point in wondering about it because I’m glad to be where I am now,” Ross said. “You know, I was just like, ‘Why would I want to redo it?’ Because any possibilities can have its challenges, so it’s not like you can find a possibility and shortcut those.”

Lin said Evelyn and Joy’s relationship resonated with him as a child of immigrant parents.

“I think it is a good visual metaphor of the pressure and the burnout that accompanies the high expectations of being an immigrant family, like not just being the child, but also the mother,” Lin said.

Lin said many second-generation U.S. residents — the children of immigrants — might experience a cultural gap between them and their

KJ Ross dressed as Evelyn Wang on Cinestill 800

Tony Lin dressed as Waymond Wang on Cinestill 800

Kuo, Lin, Ross and Roh on Cinestill 800

first-generation immigrant parents because of differences in how they grew up. Lin said his parents want to make sure he succeeds and has a better life than they did.

“My mom never went to college, and she said, ‘I want you to stand on me, I want you to step on me, and however high I can boost you is however high I can boost you, but the rest you’re gonna have to do yourself,’” Lin said. “And it’s that type of mindset, where it’s like, the mother sacrifices herself.”

Ross said she personally identified with Joy during scenes with her mother

Evelyn. One scene that spurred emotions in Ross was when Evelyn and Joy argue in the parking lot near the end of the movie.

“I never related to a scene so much because they basically hate each other, but they want to be with each other,” Ross said.

In the scene, Evelyn tells Joy she hates tattoos, even if Joy got them to represent their family. Ross said she can imagine that, if her mom knew about her own tattoos that represent her Chinese and Korean heritage, her mom would tell her something similar.

Near the end of the scene, one line in particular brought tears to Ross’s eyes.

“Maybe there is something out there, some new discovery that will make us feel like even smaller pieces of shit,” Evelyn tells Joy. “Something that explains why you still went looking for me through all of this mess, and why, no matter what, I still want to be here with you.”

Ross said she can see herself in Joy, who is going through a lot and trying to figure life out, so for Evelyn to show her daughter unconditional love felt close to home.

“It’s almost like the conversation my mom and I have never had, but it is always felt,” Ross said.

Kuo said this scene also moved her and made her think about how Joy still looked for her mom despite the generational trauma and turmoil across universes.

Roh said a scene that stuck out to them the most is during Evelyn and Joy’s last fight when Evelyn tells Joy, “Stop calling me Evelyn. I. Am. Your. Mother.” They said they’ve often seen that phrase, “I am your mother,” used in the context of control and constraint,

but in this context, Evelyn uses it out of care for her child.

“I started crying right there because despite everything, what she does, and even if there is a miscommunication between generations, she did everything out of love,” Roh said.

If “nothing matters”

One of the main themes Lin and Roh took away from the film is the pursuit of meaning. Lin said recognizing the impermanence of life can feel painful, and one might come to the conclusion that “nothing matters” as a result.

A fan-favorite scene from the film has no dialogue or actors. Yet, somehow, it is one of the most emotional scenes in the movie.

Evelyn and Joy are transported to an alternate universe where there is no life; the characters sit on the screen as rocks, one gray and one brown, as they communicate through text that fills the screen above them.

Lin said he believes this scene represents the sense of detachment one might experience to avoid feeling pain.

“I actually quite admire that about the movie, is the fact that there’s no sound, it’s text on a screen, and yet, it makes you feel this sense of like, penultimate defeat,” Lin said. “Like we’ve come all this way, we fought so hard, and at the end of the day, what do we have? What’s there? It’s just these two rocks laughing on a cliff.”

Lin said even if “nothing matters,” that idea can potentially empower people to find a sense of meaning in doing the things that actually matter to them.

“When you think about it that way, you’re just like, ‘Oh, nothing matters,’” Lin said. “But there’s like a sense of freedom in that as well, where it’s like, OK, maybe nothing in the long run really matters, but what matters is now and here.”

Roh said the motifs of the everything bagel and the googly eye in the film encapsulate the existentialism in the film.

While the everything bagel has a white center, the googly eye’s center is black, emphasizing how they are inverted versions of each other. Roh said Joy’s everything bagel represents the

viewpoint that there are good things, but it’s all going to come to an end. The googly eye reflects the lens that, even if good things come to an end, one should not discount all the joys that come out of it, Roh said.

Factors behind the film’s success

Films have a unique capacity to persuade audience members, Gray said.

“We’re seeing Michelle Yeoh, and we’re watching her joy, watching her pain, we’re watching her fight the bad guys, we’re watching her love,” Gray said. “When we are experiencing her as a character, we build a relationship where, to different varying degrees, we feel connected to what this character is experiencing.”

The independent, mid-budget film became A24’s highest-grossing movie globally, making over $100 million, according to Variety. The movie also received a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.1 out of 10 rating on IMDb.

“The fact that they were able to make over $100 million off of the film will hopefully make it that much easier for the next group of filmmakers who want to create an innovative film that’s featuring Asian actors to actually get it done,” Gray said.

Gray said a continual push for diversity in the entertainment industry and an acknowledgement of what made “Everything” successful needs to occur to help open doors for other films like it.

“I think it is so important so that we can see more not of the same story but innovation that’s getting greenlit so that we can see fuller representations of a variety of people that audiences gravitate to and enjoy,” Gray said.

For junior Izzie Agee, clothing and fashion are more than just what they wear — it is an intentional, curated and crucial part of their identity.

Agee is easily recognizable on campus, with their oversized neon jackets, elaborate hair accessories and platform shoes.

But beyond Agee’s style, their clothing represents their passion for environmental justice. For them, sustainability and artistic expression are a way of life.

Agee said they started thrifting more and getting into sustainable fashion during their senior year of high school.

“I was finding these really unique pieces that brought me a lot of joy because they set me apart,” Agee said. “I just started thinking a lot about fast and online fashion. I just realized it was too mass produced for me, it wasn’t unique to have a shirt that thousands of other people could have.”

Chris Doran, professor of Religion and founder of the Sustainability major and minor, said he recognized that Agee had a high regard for environmental issues and justice when they were in his firstyear seminar class in Fall 2020.

Agee initially came to Pepperdine to major in Psychology. After finishing their first semester, they said they weren’t sure Psychology was the right fit for them.

“I talked to Doran about [struggling with finding a major],” Agee said. “He was like, ‘Why aren’t you a Sustainability major?’ and I was like, ‘Wait, I can do that? Perfect.’”

Agee said their style identity aligns with the term sustainable maximalist, a fashion movement on social media known as an aesthetic antithesis to minimalist fashion.

Agee said their experimentation with fashion began as soon as they could dress themself.

“My parents will always tell me about how I was just a wild kid,” Agee said.

Izzie Agee on Lomography Color Negative 100.

Words: Hope Lockwood | Pictures: Lucian Himes Listen to: “No Wind Resistance!” by Kinneret

“I always had crazy hair and colorful outfits. I had a pair of purple shoes that my mom said I could only wear sometimes because when I wore them, I got super sassy and she couldn’t control me.”

Agee said they struggled to come to terms with being queer as they got older. This struggle caused them to dress more conventionally, motivated by a desire to fit in and not draw any attention to themselves.

“I was trying my best to really force myself into a box that wasn’t me,” Agee said. “I look back at pictures of myself [from then] and know I didn’t feel like myself and was super insecure.”

When Agee entered high school, they said they began expressing their identity as both nonbinary and queer. Agee found joy in cutting their hair short and wearing oversized, brightly colored clothes from the men’s section of thrift stores.

Junior Ariel Wilson, one of Agee’s roommates, said she feels blessed to see how Agee has continued to evolve since their first year at Pepperdine. Wilson said the two met because they were some of the few students living on campus during the 2020-21 academic year.

Wilson, a Sustainability major, said Agee’s unique fashion choices and emphasis on sustainability as a lifestyle instantly captivated her. Wilson said she appreciates Agee as a friend because they stay true to their ethical beliefs without limiting their creative expression.

“Izzie’s style really began with their hair,” Wilson said. “It was first blonde, then pink, then orange. Izzie’s always worn cool clothes, but their clothes switched from just being cool clothes to really representing their true identity more so than society tells us we’re allowed to.”

For Agee, their sense of style is a way of sharing their gender identity and sexuality with the world. They said the more comfortable they became with their identity, the more comfortable they became with dressing unconventionally.

Agee said they know they stick out on campus for dressing in visibly gender-nonconforming ways. While that visibility can be scary, it also means it is easier for other LGBTQ+ students to

spot them.

“I wasn’t proud of [the queer] part of myself, so I hid it for so long,” Agee said. “And now it brings me a lot of joy and pride to be physically identifiable as queer.”

Junior Jess Kovie, Agee’s other roommate, said Agee’s visibility was one of the factors that led to their friendship.

“Sometimes it can feel like you’re the only [gay person] on the whole Pepperdine campus, and that can be really isolating,” Kovie said. “We’ve been able to share really intimate feelings [about our sexualities], which is one of the main reasons our friendship is so close.”

Regarding their personal style, Agee said their cardinal rule is staying true to themselves and their identity — no matter how much it differs from the crowd.

“You can’t force yourself to be anything besides yourself,” Agee said. “It’s all about just wearing and pursuing what makes you happy and what makes you feel comfortable and confident. That’s how you end up looking and acting like your best self.”

Research: Haley Hoidal Pictures: Lucian Himes Listen to: “Nikes

on my Feet” by Mac Miller

doingt h sgni

neak e sr

MGWhat’s Your Enneagram?

Words: Alec Matulka

Pictures: Lucian Himes

Listen to: “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” by Tame Impala

I’m a nine.

This means I’m a peacemaker, a harmonizer and a mediator. Then again, I’m also an INFP. So, I’m an introverted, intuitive, feelings-oriented perceiver. Apparently, my greatest strengths are ideation, empathy and adaptability.

These are the defining characteristics of my personality. At least, they are if I take the word of a series of personality tests — Enneagram, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Big Five, CliftonStrengths. But I’m also, probably, a whole lot more complex than that, Psychology Professor Steven Rouse said.

“Personality is several different dimensions,” Rouse said. “It’s easy for people to wrap their minds around different groups of people, even though data shows really clearly that’s not what personality differences are like.”

It’s no secret that personality tests have become exponentially more popular in recent years. Truity reports

an average one million people take their Enneagram tests every 30 days, while Discover Magazine estimates two million people take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator annually.

Pepperdine is no exception to this phenomenon. Rouse said Pepperdine faculty, staff and students use personality tests with increased frequency in social, professional and academic circles. Part of this may be due to Seaver College’s high percentage of religious students.

Senior Macy Carlson said she first noticed Pepperdine’s passion for personality tests in Fall 2019. Carlson said she remembers a time in her life when, “What’s your Enneagram type?” was an everyday occurrence. During New Student Orientation and Panhellenic Recruitment her first year, Carlson said the question was ubiquitous.

“I’d never been asked that question so much in my life,” Carlson said. “Everyone was like, ‘Oh, that’s such a Pepperdine thing!’ I don’t know why, but it just is.”

WHOLE IDEA OF THE NINE DIFFERENT TYPES OF PEOPLE

- STEVE ROUSE

Four 4

Enneagram F o ru margaennE

Origins of personality tests

Rouse doesn’t know his Enneagram number. He said he’s not a fan of Enneagram, partially for reasons related to its history.

Enneagram is not a standardized personality test, Rouse said. There are hundreds of Enneagram tests littering today’s internet. The modern Enneagram system originated from the work of Bolivian philosopher Oscar Ichazo, who popularized the concept in Roman Catholic-dominated South America during the 1960s and ‘70s, according to the Enneagram Institute.

Ichazo based his nine Enneagram types on George Gurdjieff, a GreekArmenian mystic and spiritual teacher.

Gurdjieff said the Enneagram symbol originated around 2500 BCE as a mystic religious symbol, according to the Christian Research Institute. This narrative of historical and religious precedence, Rouse said, is categorically false.

“This whole idea of the nine different types of people was literally created by a con artist,” Rouse said.

Religion Professor Dyron Daughrity said there is a loose historical connection between Enneagram and Christianity. One of Ichazo’s students brought the system to the United States, where Franciscan Friar Richard Rohr popularized it. Two of Rohr’s books — “The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective” and “Discovering the Enneagram: An Ancient Tool for a New Spiritual Journey” — increased Enneagram awareness in Christian circles across the United States, according to TheologyThinkTank.com.

“THIS

WAS LITERALLY CREATED BY A CON ARTIST.”

Macy Carlson on Fujifilm 200

E nneag 5 w4

Enne a geviFmar w ruoF

Daughrity said he’s not entirely sure, from a theological standpoint, why the two seem to be linked.

“The Enneagram may help you understand your own personality, your own psychological constitution, but it sure isn’t going to get you to heaven,” Daughrity said. “Only theology will save your soul. Putting your faith in Christ, in the Creator.”

Daughrity, like Rouse, said he isn’t all that interested in learning his Enneagram number. While he doesn’t begrudge those who use the test, Christian or otherwise, it doesn’t hold any kind of spiritual meaning for him. He sees both positives and negatives with Enneagram and personality tests in general, as long as students conduct them with context and moderation.

“If we are made in the image of God, if that’s true, then understanding ourselves is going to shed significant light on the nature of God,” Daughrity said. “But anytime someone becomes too self-absorbed, instead of Christabsorbed, they’re going down the wrong path.”

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has a different history than Enneagram. Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, developed the test in 1943 from the psychology of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, according to NPR. The test has survived criticism from the U.S. Office of Strategic Services and the U.S. Educational Testing Service for its self-reported data and being “without psychometric merit.” It remains one of the most widely taken personality tests, according to a Forbes article.

Rouse said he sees a great distinction between the various personality tests available for common use, as not all

Johnathan Hodges on Fujifilm 200

- JOHNATHAN HODGES

personality tests are created equal.

“I think that it sometimes takes some wise discernment to be able to tell where a test falls on that line from poorly-designed to well-designed,” Rouse said.

Rouse said his test of choice is the NEO Personality Inventory — one of the tests that measures the Big Five — which Pepperdine does not offer. The Big Five is more grounded in psychological research than Enneagram or Myers-Briggs, according to Management Consulted, a consulting firm. It’s a tool for self-exploration the same way the more commercialized, less research-backed Enneagram and Myers-Briggs are, but it often takes a backseat to its flashier neighbors.

“If you have to fix something at your house and you have the choice between really well made tools versus ones you buy for $5 at a convenience store, if you’re really doing something important, you’re going to want to go with the well-constructed tools,” Rouse said.

Enneagram’s rise in popularity among students in her time at the Career Center.

“I know it’s become more and more popular, and I’ve had students reach out about it and ask if we offer it,” Pontrelli said. “I know it’s out there, and there’s quite a few materials out there about it.”

Pontrelli said her experience with Enneagram tests has been entirely personal, but her experience with other personality tests, specifically MyersBriggs and CliftonStrengths, is based in her work.

The Career Center has offered personality tests to students as educational resources since before Pontrelli began her job there around nine years ago, she said. The center has offered a Career Coaching program since 2001 that incorporates both Myers-Briggs and CliftonStrengths. Part of the Career Center’s operating budget goes toward purchasing tests for student use and training staff members to adequately administer them.

the Enneagram test has taken hold of faith communities in recent years, according to Christianity.com and CommercialAppeal.com.

Pepperdine’s undergraduate student population is 73% Christian, according to the Fall 2021 Enrollment Census. First-year Johnathan Hodges, a five wing four on the Enneagram, said he definitely sees a connection between his faith and the lessons one can take from personality tests like Enneagram.

“It highlights that we need everybody,” Hodges said. “It can highlight such beauty in people. It gives us a better sense of the beauty of people who aren’t like you. That all comes back to the fact that we’re made in God’s image. Everyone in their own unique way is beautiful.”

Nine types of people

Marla Pontrelli, director of Career Education at the Seaver College Career Center, is a nine like me. Pontrelli said she took an Enneagram test during a professional development program for Student Affairs staff members at Pepperdine. She learned more about Enneagram at Harbor, Pepperdine’s annual four-day Bible lecture conference, which had speakers who discussed Enneagram a few years ago.

Pontrelli said she’s noticed

Pontrelli said she emphasizes contextualizing results — it’s one thing to take a personality test, and it’s another to know how to interpret the information and what to do with it.

“If you just have a report, what’s a report going to do?” Pontrelli said. “It’s only going to make sense when you have someone more knowledgeable in that area explain what that means.”

While Myers-Briggs and CliftonStrengths dominate the professional and academic circles at Pepperdine, Pontrelli said she’s noticed Enneagram finds its way in more casual settings. This trend is unsurprising —

Carlson is a four on the Enneagram, which is the individualist type. A number of students on campus feel positively about Enneagram, both Carlson and Hodges said. Part of the

Enneagra

ahW argae

“Oh, that’s such a Pepperdine thing!”

“IT CAN HIGHLIGHT SUCH BEAUTY IN PEOPLE. IT GIVES US A BETTER SENSE OF THE BEAUTY OF PEOPLE WHO AREN’T LIKE YOU.”

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Enneagram’s appeal is its sociability.

“Sometimes if I don’t know someone very well, I’ll just ask them, ‘What’s your Enneagram type?’” Carlson said. “It’s a fun conversation starter.”

Hodges said he agreed with this sentiment — whether a fellow classmate knows about Enneagram or not, Hodges is happy to discuss it.

Both Carlson and Hodges said Enneagram tests work particularly well as a framework for self-reflection, but they also recognized its limitations.

“I don’t take it too seriously — it’s just a test,” Carlson said. “I don’t take it as fact. It’s just an interesting thing to look into and an interesting thing to use to self-reflect.”

Alongside Pepperdine’s Enneagram-enthusiasts are fellow students more doubtful of the test. Senior John Palmer, for instance, is a five. He’s an investigator, which he said sometimes comes with unwanted connotations.

“The stereotype is that it’s the emotionless one,” Palmer said, smiling.

While Palmer has taken personality tests like Enneagram in the past, he said he’s skeptical of them. Like Rouse, Palmer said the lack of psychological research backing up Enneagram bothers him. He worries that some people put too much emphasis on personality tests like the Enneagram.

“They don’t use it as a tool, but as a full-on description of themselves,” Palmer said. “And I don’t think it’s capable of doing that.”

Any test that places people into categories is limited, Palmer said.

“There aren’t nine types of people, to me,” Palmer said. “There’s a lot more than that. I think people are too unique to be put into nine boxes.”

Personality tests — like the principles they seek to measure — are nuanced, Rouse said. Definitively rejecting a test may not be the best solution.

“Any test that causes people to think more compassionately about other people by recognizing people are different from them and maybe even think more compassionately about themselves can be beneficial,” Rouse said. “Even a badly made test could potentially be used for valuable purposes.”

John Palmer on Fujifilm 200

Sweats By Abby G

Sweats By Abby G” owner Abby Gearhart takes pride in keeping her products affordable and consistent so anyone who wants them can buy them.

Gearhart said she officially made and launched her first sweatshirt, and her company, in September 2020. Crew necks are about $35. T-shirts are about $25, and the thickest material sweatshirts are $55 to $60. Nothing is over $60.

“I had no idea what was going to happen with it [the company],” Gearhart said.

She owns and operates the small business herself, but Gearhart joked that her mom is her unpaid employee and said she loves to be a part of the business.

Gearhart gets her materials from a local screen printer in Westlake.

“They’re the ones doing everything, but I design it and then work with them to help get it perfect, then they get the hoodies and put it all together for me,” Gearhart said.

Being locally sourced is convenient for Gearhart, and she said she prefers it that way. She likes the one-on-one, in-person connection she has with the printer and said she can easily pick up her products.

Words: Victoria La Ferla | Pictures: Lucian Himes | Listen to: “Daylight” by Harry Styles

DRESS to EXPRESS

Students dress for themselves — not the trends

Clothing isn’t optional. Every day, people all over the world get dressed and go about their lives. Where everyone differs is what they decide to put on.

In the age of social media, fashion trends come and go in a blink of an eye. While some say this can make finding a sense of personal style difficult, others use it as motivation to dress against the trends.

From cowboy hats to graphic eyeliner, students are fighting micro-trends in their own unique ways. One of those students is senior Gabby Dardano, who said she dresses to express how she feels on a given day rather than to follow a trend.

“I definitely think fashion is a form of art for sure,” Dardano said. “Art is a form of self-expression, and fashion is self-expression in a different way.”

An age of micro-trends

Micro-trends in fashion are similar to normal trends, but the difference is that social media accelerates the micro-trends, causing them to be short-lived.

This fall, leg warmers, minimalist leather jackets and metallic accessories seem to be all the rave, according to Who What Wear.

Four different students wearing a micro-trend — such as white Nike Air Force 1 shoes, Lululemon Athletica athleisure and Brandy Melville clothes — declined to discuss their style choices.

There is nothing wrong with following these trends. Most people do, hence why they are so trendy. But some, like Dardano, said they prefer to establish their own individual styles.

“I want to kind of stand out and do it because I want to do it, not because everyone else likes it,” Dardano said.

Words: Lydia duPerier | Pictures: Lucian Himes | Listen to: “Malibu 1992” by COIN

Chloe Jurdana’s patchwork jeans on Lomography

Discovering an individual style

The thing Dardano said wakes her up in the morning is the excitement of getting to pick out an outfit for the day. Dardano’s closet is filled with only thrifted and upcycled clothes, lots of unique body chains and chunky jewelry.

Dardano said a favorite outfit she wore recently was a colorful red and orange midi skirt with a thrifted Diesel shirt that she cut the sleeves off of, paired with some thrifted brown and navy Adidas sneakers.

“It’s a bunch of different colors put in an outfit,” Dardano said. “But it was like the contrast of the really pretty flowy skirt with really harsh black and brown colors that were really baggy that I love, and then I wore this pearl necklace with it. I felt so cool in it.”

Junior Andrew Beggs said he values using clothes to express his goofy personality.

From stripes to polka dots and everything in between, Beggs said if he sees an item that looks out of the norm, he’s buying it. The color palette of his wardrobe reflects this mindset as well, with colors ranging from bright orange to lavender.

“Some people decorate with tattoos and all sorts of piercings,” Beggs said. “I just decorate with clothes — it’s less permanent, it’s less scary.”

With an eclectic sense of style, Beggs’ closet is full of statement pieces. He said Harry Styles is a big inspiration for a lot of his clothing choices — specifically the more progressive ones, such as a frilly blouse.

“They’re more on the feminine side,” Beggs said. “I do like that. I love the color and everything. I really just love the

nontraditional styles.”

Beggs said being bold and buying an item of clothing that he normally wouldn’t wear helped him to stay away from trends and develop a personal style.

Known as “the cowboy” to his friends and others on campus, junior Matthew Hamm said he spends most days sporting a pair of jeans, a button down, boots and a cowboy hat.

Tucked away behind the brim of his straw cowboy hat, Hamm keeps a photo of his great grandfather and uncle riding horseback. He said it makes him feel like he always has a piece of his home — Malakoff, Texas — with him.

“I try to dress like my grandfather or my great grandfather because they mean a lot to me, and their integrity of who they were as men and what they believed in,” Hamm said. “I really feel connected to them by the way I dress.”

As an actor, Hamm said he likes to dress in a way that is authentic to him since he’s always playing different characters and studying other people’s lives.

“I really find value in maintaining my sense of identity,” Hamm said. “And I feel mostly like myself and connected to home when I’m dressing like I would at home.”

Similar to Hamm, senior Chloe Jurdana finds a lot of her identity in her fashion choices. As a woman in STEM, she said people often act surprised to hear she is studying to be a doctor because of the way she dresses.

“I’m expressing myself, and I’m allowed to be creative and unique but also be interested in scientific things,” Jurdana said. “Which I think is interesting because I think your style doesn’t have to tie to your occupation or what you’re passionate about.”

Chloe Jurdana’s hand-drawn tote on Lomography 100

Gabby Dardano’s knit sweater on Lomography 100

Jurdana said she gets most of her clothes from her mom and often dresses to her mood. She also shops at places like Free People, Urban Outfitters, thrift stores and local boutiques.

“I definitely try to go for older fashion trends,” Jurdana said. “I like ‘70s and ‘80s inspired things. I also like a lot of edgy stuff — so I just honestly kind of stay away from the trends.”

A favorite hobby of Jurdana’s is creating or adding elements to her clothes to make them unique to her. Crocheted leg warmers and painted tank tops are just a few of her latest works. Her favorite is a pair of thrifted jeans that she sewed patches onto.

“I’ve been collecting these patches for four years throughout high school,” Jurdana said. “And I didn’t know what I wanted to do with them, and when I saw these pants, I just knew that they would fit perfectly.”

Jurdana also said she likes to use jewelry and graphic eyeliner to accentuate her outfits.

“I like to incorporate my eyeliner into my outfits, so I like to color match them and also kind of based off [my outfit’s] theme,” Jurdana said. “I use these liquid eyeliners to do really cool designs on my eyelids.”

Dressing for confidence

Finding an individual style isn’t just an external change in the way people present themselves but an internal change as well. Studies show that the way people dress can positively affect their mental states.

A study from the Kellogg School of Management at North-

western University showed that when research subjects wore certain items of clothing, people acted differently toward them, and the subjects themselves behaved differently too.

This study concluded that the way someone dresses affects their confidence and performance of various activities throughout the day.

For Dardano, fashion is a confidence booster, and she said she often asks herself specific questions before leaving the house in an outfit to be sure it makes her feel like the best version of herself.

“‘Do I feel good in it? Do I like the way I’m looking? Does this color complement me? Do I like the way this fits on me?’” Dardano said. “Just focusing on yourself and just honestly how you feel is the best step.”

For some, this increase in confidence can relieve the stress of being self-conscious about their clothes. Beggs said once he was happy with his fashion aesthetic, he stopped caring about what others thought of his appearance.

“Once you have your style nailed down and you’re like, ‘Oh, yes, I like how it looked today,’ you’re not thinking about that all day,” Beggs said.

While the micro-trends of fashion don’t seem to be going anywhere, Dardano said she hopes more people will embrace their individuality and dress how they want to dress — and if that means following the trends, then she said to go for it.

“There’s so many different opinions online and you see so many different things on social media — and everyone has something to say all the time,” Dardano said. “But I just want people to know that if you like it, and you are confident wearing it, you’re gonna look amazing, and you’re gonna feel amazing.”

Matthew Hamm’s jeans, hat and boots on Lomography 100 Andrew Begg’s white and red converse on Lomography 100

yb

and r we m att

Tikkun Olam: How she heals the world through OneStop

One of the precepts in Judaism is Tikkun Olam, the concept of repairing and healing the world.

OneStop Senior Director Andrea Harris has built her life around this tenet.

Harris has worked for Pepperdine for 20 years. She said she has built up a reputation as an “outsider” during this time. She knows administrators don’t usually wear rainbow platform Dr. Martens, give presentations in their pajamas, flaunt dozens of piercings or have a rainbow office full of kitschy items from the Target dollar section, but that doesn’t stop her.

Harris believes in authenticity, and she said that’s what makes her excellent at helping students.

“I want people to say, ‘This person made a difference because she cares for people,’” Harris said.

As head of OneStop, Harris helps

students with everything academic: planning their schedules, adding and dropping classes, deciding majors, answering financial aid and academic integrity questions. If she doesn’t know the answer, she directs students to the person who does. She is also part of the Student Care Team, where she cares for students in times of crisis, including acting as a bridge between them and their professors.

Bryan Reeder, an academic advising associate who works with Harris, said she has a unique quality of making a person feel like they are the most important person in the room. While Harris fulfills the demands of her job by caring for students academically, she takes it a step further by fostering an environment with an open-door policy.

“Andrea is in many ways the heart and soul of this institution,” Reeder said. “Her approach to student care is

truly holistic and comes from a very loving and genuine place.”

As a self-proclaimed people-person, Harris said she relishes interacting with students, staff, administrators and faculty.

Harris said she has not had an easy year. Within six months, she experienced multiple deaths in her family and received a breast cancer diagnosis.

“I joke that, ‘10 out of 10 don’t recommend losing a parent, [a cousin] and having cancer in the same few months,’” Harris said.

While compassion has always come easy to her, Harris said that after going through these experiences, she has become adept at navigating the minor and major tragedies in people’s lives. Recently, she said she supported a student through the death of her mother.

Words: Hope Lockwood | Pictures: Lucian Himes | Listen to: “Do Your Thing” by Basement Jaxx

Andrea Harris and her dogs, Beaumont and Lela, on Lomography Color Negative 100

“She came here and sat in my office for 45 minutes and didn’t say a word,” Harris said. “We found out someone was coming to take her home, so I walked her back to her dorm and packed up her clothes and waited with her until the person came.”

Harris has always been an outspoken ally to marginalized communities. While she has always cared about the LGBTQ+ community, she said coming to Pepperdine made her realize how hurt and in need of care they are, particularly on campus.

Harris said she hopes her continued participation in the Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED) Project and her work at OneStop can help groups on campus who may feel lost or uncared for.

“Everyone is different, everyone is unique,” Reeder said. “You can’t just lump people together under one label. Andrea is very individual in her solutions for problems. Andrea sees each person as a solely unique individual, and she believes in treating them with dignity and respect.”

Harris said she relates to the experience of belonging to a marginalized group on campus.

“On campus, it is a little

different to be a minority,” she said. “Especially because I’ve lived in many environments where Judaism was so prevalent, I never felt like a minority. It’s eyeopening not being in the majority and having to adapt to that fact.”

In her first December at OneStop, Harris said her boss brought her Hanukkah decals to add to the office’s Christmas decorations, which made her happy.

Evan Gold, senior advisor at OneStop, is also Jewish and said Harris’ faith is a building block of OneStop.

Community, accountability and personal responsibility are three important values in Judaism. Because of this, Gold said, Harris’ love is never conditional. She goes out of her way to make people feel like they’re part of her community and that she supports them.

“Andrea supports you at OneStop, but so will I, so will Bryan, so will all of the employees here,” Gold said. “And that’s Andrea’s doing.”

Harris said she is grateful for the chances she’s been given to help those around her.

“The student I helped move out needed something in that particular second, and she knew

she could get it here,” Harris said. “Because of that, I’m profoundly grateful to have that involvement with not just students, but also just people’s lives.”

DIFFERENCE

- ANDREA HARRIS

“I WANT PEOPLE TO SAY, ‘THIS PERSON MADE A

BECAUSE SHE CARES FOR PEOPLE.’”

Sterling Place

2022 alumnus Matthew Yoo’s Sterling Place, which he launched in 2020, takes an edgy approach to its sterling silver jewelry and fashion. The brand dips into the “fisherman aesthetic.”

The “Fisherman Core,” as Yoo calls his clothing, reminds him of growing up around bodies of water, living close

to piers and seeing fishermen in the early mornings with “their cool vests and baggy jackets and pants.”

Sterling Place is the name of the street Yoo grew up on in New Jersey, which he said holds a lot of memories for him and fits perfectly with his sterling silver jewelry brand.

Yoo based Sterling Place’s brand on

aspects of Christianity, incorporating verses like Hebrews 13:14 into his designs — but the brand is open to all.

The prices range from shirts being $32 to jeans and hoodies being $80 to $90, with more intricate pieces ranging from $150 to $220. The jewelry ranges from $150 to $160.

Words: Victoria La Ferla | Pictures: Courtesy of Sterling Place Listen to: “Hotline” Bling by Drake

CHOOSING TO HEAL

Students’ relationships with body image

For years, junior Chloé Lukasiak has been on a journey toward separating her self-worth from what she sees in the mirror.

Lukasiak said she opened up about her experience with body dysmorphia and eating disorders on her social media platforms on video for the first time in September 2021, but she struggled for years before that. In her September 2021 video, Lukasiak said her struggles began two years after she left the show “Dance Moms.”

After realizing she wanted help, Lukasiak said she went to a rehabilitation center for eating disorders. It’s been two and a half years since Lukasiak came home from rehab.

“When I first got home, I thought,

‘OK, I’m done, it’s fixed. I’m good for the rest of my life,’” Lukasiak said. “And then these two and a half years I’ve realized it’s a choice you have to make every day, you have to wake up and you have to choose to continue to heal — healing, it’s never ending.”

Why don’t I look like this?

Psychology Professor Jennifer Harriger said body image is the cognitions and feelings people have about their body, and body dysmorphia is a clinical diagnosis where someone becomes preoccupied with a specific body feature and spends a significant portion of the day body checking and being overly-focused on it.

Harriger said body checking consists of constantly monitoring what the body looks like — not just in the mirror, but anything reflective.

Eating disorders are another clinical diagnosis, Harriger said, that affect an individual’s food intake and eating habits.

Disordered eating is when a person engages in some of the same behaviors as one would with an eating disorder — such as avoiding certain food groups, compulsive eating, fasting or taking diet pills — but with a lower frequency or severity, according to the National Eating Disorders Collaboration.

“I was just constantly looking at how other people’s bodies looked,” Lukasiak said. “I was stuck in an endless cycle of

Words: Samantha Torre | Pictures: Lucian Himes | Listen to: “Anti-Hero” by Taylor Swift ft. Bleachers

Chloé Lukasiak on digital

like, ‘Why don’t I look like that? Why can’t I look like that?’”

Finding control

Lukasiak said her body dysmorphia and struggles with body image stemmed from her desire to have control over just one part of her life.

“First the body dysmorphia blossomed, and then later on I started trying to control my eating, and I experienced, or however you would phrase it, bulimia, and then binge eating and anorexia,” she said.

Harriger said the transition from living at home to living at college is a risky period, where young adults with newfound independence are more likely to engage in disordered eating or experience body image issues.

Moving from her hometown of Pittsburgh to Los Angeles created a greater struggle for Lukasiak.

“It’s like everything I saw on Instagram while I was living in Pittsburgh was standing in front of my face,” Lukasiak said. “So it was a struggle, and I started eating less.”

Lukasiak said that when she first came to Los Angeles, she was aware she

was not eating enough.

“It’s not like I was just forgetting and then eating when I remembered,” Lukasiak said. “I was remembering and choosing not to [eat].”

Junior Sofia Thure is a resident advisor for first-year students this year, and was also an RA at Seaside Residence Hall last year.

While Thure said she has not heard explicit conversations about body image, she has noticed the emphasis some of her residents place on working out.

“In my freshman dorm, there’s two girls that track their weight and weigh themselves every week,” Thure said. “And so at the end of the day, it’s [happening] in their room, and I’ve asked them and they’re like, ‘We’re just trying to reach our optimal weight,’ or like, ‘We’re trying to lose weight.’”

Experiences across gender

Harriger said having previous issues with body image, body dysmorphia or eating disorders can exacerbate the risk of returning to those habits.

“It affects men and women similarly, and actually pretty equally, but in different ways, because the societal pres-

sures for the ideal body for a man and the ideal body for a woman are very different,” Harriger said.

For women, this can manifest in restrictive dieting; men more often have an obsession with building muscle mass, Harriger said.

Junior Chris Ganey is a spiritual life advisor for first-year men’s house, JPenn, and was an SLA for Seaside last year. While issues with body image or body dysmorphia have yet to come up directly in conversations, he said it may subconsciously manifest in what students eat or how often they workout.

“It’s kind of expressed not in direct ways, but in their demeanor, the way they carry themselves and the comments about things that are related,” Ganey said.

Harriger said women might be more likely to talk about their struggles, and early research was geared toward women, which affected the outcome of the research.

“Specifically guys, and especially freshmen college-age guys, like to bury that,” Ganey said. “They try to just work through it or pretend like it’s not there and do a lot of concealing some of the thoughts they have about themselves or what they’re feeling.”

Ganey said when working out, residents might not be thinking of what makes a person healthy or strong.

“More of the guys that we interact with are having the perspective more of like, ‘What do I look like?’ rather than, ‘How healthy I am,’” Ganey said.

Peer pressure on appearance

Lukasiak said she feels there is a pressure on girls and women to look a certain way — especially in Los Angeles.

“I felt a lot of shame about how I looked and feeling different and feeling like an outsider compared to all of the beautiful models and actresses that walk around LA,” she said. “LA re-

ally contributes to that feeling of placing our value and our worth in our bodies.”

Within Pepperdine, Ganey said male students form subgroups and cultures.

“Depending on what you’re associating yourself with, it would not determine your body image but determine the ideal for your body image,” Ganey said. ”There is a dress-nice kind of crowd, there’s the frat crowd and the athlete crowd.”

On Pepperdine’s campus, Harriger said there is a pressure to look or dress a certain way.

“I’ve heard a lot of students tell me that they feel pressure to be ‘bikini ready’ all the time because they live near a beach,” Harringer said. “A lot of people who didn’t grow up in Southern California will tell me that it was a real shock when they first got here, because the focus on appearance, I think, is even more of an issue here than maybe even other parts of the country.”

Finding one’s worth

At Pepperdine, however, Lukasiak said being busy with classes and making friends took her out of the “negative space.”

“I would just feed myself when I had to, and I wasn’t really thinking about that,” Lukasiak said. “I was more so focused on classes and making friends, and I didn’t have the mental space to focus on it so much. And I think that’s sort of what helped me get out of that place.”

For Lukasiak, when COVID-19 sent students home, she was able to reflect and see she needed help because her behaviors were unhealthy.

“It’s never just one thing,” Harriger said. “So genetics can play a role. Family, peers and the media have cultural messages around body size and weight. All of that plays a role in how someone feels about their body.”

Over time, Lukasiak said she began to discover that her worth is not based on her body.

“It’s so important to actually take

the time and the space to learn to accept yourself and to learn to appreciate yourself,” Lukasiak said. “Because the more solid foundation you have in accepting how you look or how you feel, the harder it is to compare yourself to others and to fall into this spiral of judgment and comparison and feeling less than.”

After she stopped engaging in dangerous behaviors, Lukasiak said she started talking with a therapist and discovered the importance of leaning on others for support.

Lukasiak said she first showed her parents a poem she wrote about her experience with eating disorders, but, at the time, they were not sure what she was talking about.

“I didn’t tell them in an easy way,” Lukasiak said. “I was just sort of like, ‘Oh, this is my poem.’ [It] was just a big shock for them because obviously, they don’t want to hear that their child is going through that.”

When Lukasiak was struggling, she said she thought that, because a lot of other people go through these struggles, it was OK for her to have the same unhealthy habits.

“Other people are struggling, but that doesn’t take away from my struggle and that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve health as well,” Lukasiak said. “And

so that’s when I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I should tell my parents.’ And I think I just started to get to a better place mentally, just over time. And I realized that I wanted help. I didn’t want to feel that way anymore.”

Putting in the work

Lukasiak said releasing her poem on social media was overwhelming “in the best way.” However, she said acknowledging her struggles did not mean they were gone.

“It was when people were commenting and telling me their similar experiences or how they felt similarly, that I realized, like, ‘OK, this is just the first step, now I need to actually put in the work,’” Lukasiak said.

Between releasing the poem and posting the first video on her YouTube channel, Lukasiak said she had time to heal.

“And so I thought even though it’s really scary and it’s really vulnerable and, every time I post something vulnerable I always regret it, and I want to take it back and take back my vulnerability, but ultimately [I] always put it out there,” Lukasiak said.

Going public has been a crucial part of the healing process, Lukasiak said. She wants to tell herself and others

that it is OK to need support.

“Just reading the comments and hearing people say, ‘Thank you so much. I feel less alone.’ Or, like, they told me their stories of what they went through or just any of their responses makes me feel like it was all worth it, being vulnerable, just because I think part of the healing process is feeling less alone,” Lukasiak said.

As for the future, Lukasiak said she wants to continue helping others cope with and heal from their own struggles.

“No one ever noticed because I wasn’t actively changing or physically changing, but it was just a lot of mental difficulty,” Lukasiak said. “It’s enough of a balance where I feel like I can talk about it and not be triggered or relapse or anything, and I just really want people to know that they’re not alone in their struggle if they’re going through it.”

To those struggling, Lukasiak said it will get better — people care, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Sharing these issues allows people to connect with one another and form a tighter, more supportive community.

“That’s why it’s important to share so that we can continue to heal with one another and share with one another and make it so much less stigmatized and more safe for everyone,” Lukasiak said.

Ganey said body image issues are something students can share with their RAs, SLAs, the Counseling Center and other resources around campus. Ganey also offered words of encouragement.

“You’re created in an intricate way to be the unique person that you are and whatever that looks like,” Ganey said. “I know there’s so many outside voices and noises trying to tell you to be something that you’re not, or telling you that what you are isn’t good enough, but that’s the way you’re made and made for a specific purpose.”

Ultimately, Lukasiak said it’s OK to not have it all figured out on your own.

“It doesn’t mean that you’re broken or incapable of handling yourself,” Lukasiak said. “It just means you need to be hugged a little tighter.”

My Daily Sacrifice

I kneel in reverence.

The water is the same clear color, gazing back at me, beckoning me.

I have been here before, countless times, spilling my secrets one by one.

I complete each step with gentle care — society is the puppeteer and I am the puppet.

My hands, though, are not gentle. They rip away my insides and claw at the porcelain toilet, my only tether to humanity.

Loneliness drives me here, perhaps.

Maybe it is because one day, I hope, someone will notice.

The panic-like hope that someone will love me in the way I have forgotten to love myself.

Maybe it is the empty feeling inside, the insatiable black hole, that takes and takes and takes and takes.

“Never enough,” it sneers at me. I drown in it most days.

There are tears spilling from my eyes.

I do not remember when I started crying. I hate it.

I hate the burning that overwhelms my throat.

I hate the blood that drips from my nose, drops of red that interrupt my masterpiece.

It is too much

The blood, the tears, the burning. Then my hands begin to shake.

I can barely keep a grip on reality. The only comfort offered is the pulsing silence of the evening. It knows.

It has born witness to my ceremony before.

I want to stop. But I cannot.

My demon has become my savior. My hands move of their own accord, demanding my sacrifice.

I yield.

Words: Chloé Lukasiak | Picture: Lucian Himes

[untitleD] Fashion has no labels

Words: LIza Esquibias | Art: Whitney Powell Listen to: “Fashion” by David Bowie

With clothes scattered across her bedroom floor and splatters of paint still drying on her now one-of-a-kind pair of jeans, senior Lawson Rudd prepared to debut her newest display of art.

Rudd works at Res Ipsa, a one-of-akind boutique in the Malibu Country Mart. She said the merchandise at the store inspired her to make some of her clothes more unique — often through adding her own designs to clothes to give them a story.

“I think it’s a really effective way to stand out when you wear something that really feels like yourself, or wearing something that you made, or added some flair to,” Rudd said.

Whether it is through sewing together an old pair of jeans and a quilt to make a good-as-new denim jacket or sketching on canvas sneakers, creativity has no bounds when it comes to fashion design, Rudd said.

Fashion is much more than clothes draping people’s bodies — it tells a story, brings people together and expresses creativity in a way everyone interprets differently. Fashion has less to do with what people see and more to do with its creation, Rudd said. Designers Yoni Atias and Omer Barnea said they agree.

“Fashion is rooted in craftsmanship,” Barnea said. “It’s rooted from that person who was interested in garment-making and in those techniques that allow for the construction and the foundation of garment-building, which grew into this large industry that we now call the fashion industry.”

The art of design

As owners of Attachments, a clothing brand aimed at innovation and raising awareness of social issues, Atias and Barnea said they merged their strengths to create pieces that push limits.

“A big thing that we like to focus on through every collection is learning new and innovative ways to sew with techniques that we didn’t know before,” Atias said.

Growing up in a musical household, Atias said he always wanted a creative career. Barnea, on the other hand, was interested in engineering, which he said

made them a perfect design team with an eye for both style and technique.

One of their recent collections diverged from the norm, they said, with a mix of materials they usually would not sew together.

“It was based off climbing gear, and the materials we were using were like nylons, and then spandex and ribbings, and a lot of very, you know, unique combinations of fabrics that you don’t really see people working with hand in hand,” Atias said.

Atias and Barnea said their newest collection, The Worst Generation, focused on reimagining a man’s suit. In the process of creating the suits, they learned the complexity of making what many view as a basic garment.

Senior Justin Selva naturally gravitates toward original styles. When people create something that fits uniquely for themselves, he said it feels as though he is watching the evolution of an art piece.

“I even see people on TikTok who make their own stuff out of something random they buy,” Selva said. “People like creativity, people like to be inspired by visuals, and that’s something that I think is a very visual, base form of art — the human body.”

A mission of Attachments, Atias said, is to make people feel like each garment is made for them specifically.

“People can really fall in love with the techniques that make a simple garment, or the way that can make somebody feel when it fits them properly,” Atias said.

A garment’s story begins at its conception, Barnea said. The art of sketching a design onto a blank paper or using a needle and thread on a sample is where a designer begins discovering the meaning behind an item of clothing, he said, and how they want others to feel when they wear it.

“We want people to have a relationship with our clothes,” Barnea said.

It is easy, in those beginning stages of design, to think about mass production and consumption more than intent behind a design, Barnea said.

“We’re not out here chasing trends and trying to sell as many garments as possible,” Barnea said. “We want to

inspire people to take a second look at things and to really get them to think deeper about the world around them.”

The art of a fashion show

Runway shows, red carpets and events like the Met Gala exhibit the art of fashion and design, Selva said.

Attachments’ fashion shows follow a narrative style. Those in attendance go for an experience, not just a viewing, Barnea said.

“CLOTHING DOESN’T HAVE TO HAVE A GENDER — COLOR OR PATTERN DOESN’T HAVE A GENDER.”

- JUSTIN SELVA

“For us, that’s what a fashion show is all about — telling a story,” Barnea said.

Attachments’ most recent show highlighted the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles, Barnea said. The room, runway and models embodied what it is like to be unhoused, and Barnea and

Atias said they wanted to shock the audience.

The contrast between what attendees thought they would see at a fashion show — luxury and exclusivity — and what they got — reality and unrest — was meant to display the impact the homelessness crisis has on the city where many people live in a bubble and ignore it.

“It kind of encompasses the whole idea of, even in LA, people think about it as, California and LA is Beverly Hills, Hollywood, the land of celebrities and rich people,” Barnea said. “Then [they] come here, and this is what you see — more homeless people than you see rich people or celebrities or whatever you want to call it. So we really wanted to raise awareness of that.”

Atias said a runway show, or any presentation of fashion, should give insight and nuance into the fashion.

“We want people to feel like there’s

development in our brand and they’re seeing it unfold,” Atias said.

They put great thought into each element of a show, Barnea said — through the stitching on the garments, the lighting of the room or persona of the models.

“We love creating,” Barnea said. “We love telling a story. We love the choreography [of a fashion show], you know. We spend months and months hand-making each garment and selecting which model we think would look best in it and color-coordinating that, and then going with makeup looks to really emphasize the story.”

Selva said fashion-focused events inspire those who watch for styling ideas and also celebrate the designers behind the work.

“There’s not just one sense of meaning to the word fashion,” Selva said. “The Met Gala was a good example of like, there’s a theme, but everyone

still looks different.”

With an eye for technique, Atias said he wishes the Met Gala or red carpet fashion placed more of an emphasis on the making of the clothes.

“The craftsmanship is definitely there,” Atias said. “It does take somebody who understands the construction of garments to form those shapes, you know, and for it to be wearable.”

The art of styling

Selva said his favorite part of each day is getting ready. It is a time when he feels he can give people a look into who he is through the styling of the clothing on his body.

“When I put together an outfit, I kind of focus it on something that has to stand out first,” Selva said. “I think about what’s going to make my outfit pop, whether that be the pants, whether that be a patterned shirt, I focus on

something that’s going to grab your attention.”

Selva said art is about thinking outside the box and transforming one’s imagination into something tangible, he said, and fashion has allowed him to do that.

“I think it’s definitely cool to mix it up a little bit and see what really works for you and realize that not everything has to be gender-based or anything like that,” Selva said. “Clothing doesn’t have to have a gender — color or pattern doesn’t have a gender.”

Atias and Barnea said Attachments focuses on the idea of creating cohe-

sive yet clever looks out of materials or styles that traditionally would not go together.

“Attachments is about looking for those individual beauties in people, in garments and materials,” Barnea said.

Rudd said she does not have one approach to getting dressed — rather, the process is a creative outlet for her. She said styling her outfits is not necessarily an easy process, but it is a fun one.

“I just try, try, try, try, try on,” Rudd said. “My closet is always a mess after I’ve gotten ready.”

Both Rudd and Selva express themselves artistically by repurposing items

to wear. Selva said he often buys an oversized shirt and cuts it to fit him right.

Rudd and Selva both said they enjoy purchasing unconventional clothing — such as statement pieces made up of material that otherwise would have been thrown out — because it brings life to their outfits.

“No one else is going to understand that outfit the same way I do, and I love that,” Rudd said.

Photo by Haley Hoidal Crested Butte, CO on Kodak Gold

Photo by Marley Penagos Los Angeles, CA on Kodak Gold

Photo by Marley Penagos Brian Head, UT on Fujifilm 400

Photo by Lucian Himes Big Sur, CA on Fujifilm 200

- MARLEY PENAGOS, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

“I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN BOTH FASCINATED AND FRIGHTENED BY THE SIMULTANEOUS UNIQUENESS OF AND SIMILARITIES BETWEEN EACH HUMAN LIFE AROUND ME. IN A WAY, IT WAS MY GOAL FOR THIS MAGAZINE TO PRESENT YOU, DEAR READER, WITH THAT SAME IDEA. ENCAPSULATED IN EACH PIECE IS A TINY SNAPSHOT OF SOMEBODY’S STORY.”